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A new Power Ranger will debut in the Shattered Grid comic book crossover event that will see every Power Ranger ever team up together to fight the evil Lord Drakkon.

Take a look at the teaser image:

Art by Dan Mora. (BOOM! Studios/Saban Brands)

As you can see, the image of the Power Ranger is little more than a silhouette at the epicenter of a fiery explosion, but the caped figure does appear to be female. The identity of this Power Ranger will remain a mystery until Saban's Go GoPower Rangers#9, out in April, but to tide us over until then, writers Ryan Parrott and Kyle Higgins offered us a few clues.

“It’s a new Ranger with a familiar face,” teased Higgins, who writes the main Mighty Morphin Power Rangers series that takes place right after Tommy Oliver the Green Ranger joined the team. He has been building up to Shattered Grid since he first started his run in 2015, planning so it would come about in 2018 for the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers 25th anniversary.

Parrott writes Go Go Power Rangers, which takes place earlier in the timeline just after Zordon first recruited the team and shows Jason, Billy, Zack, Trini and Kimberly struggling to learn about their powers and deal with the impact on their social lives. Parrott added that the new Power Ranger has never appeared in any of the TV series or comic books, “but they will arrive in a way that allows for a very personal relationship with all of the Rangers.

With the first eight issues of Go Go I’ve been trying to do very small, character-based stories. And I wanted to make sure that, for Shattered Grid, bringing in this new Ranger wouldn’t just mean that I would have to side-step all of the storylines that I’ve been building. What was great was, when we came up with who they are, they could be brought in in a way that actually propelled the personal stories in a way that actually made them better.”

Art by Jamal Campbell. (BOOM! Studios/Saban Brands)

The story that has played out in the Power Rangers comics thus far is quite the trip, but to summarize, just after Tommy joined the Power Rangers team, they faced a new enemy called the Black Dragon, who nearly defeated them. It turned out that the Black Dragon was from an alternate timeline where instead of turning to the good side, Tommy remained Rita Repulsa’s evil servant, beat the Power Rangers and rendered them powerless, and took over the world under the moniker Lord Drakkon. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he wields the combined power of both the Green and White Rangers, making him an immense threat on the battlefield.

The Rangers eventually managed to take down Drakkon, but rather than face defeat, he threw himself off a cliff (as villains like to do) and managed to sneak through a portal to their world. There, he was captured by a secret government organization and is currently imprisoned. However, given that Shattered Grid sees Drakkon back in action and threatening all existence, it’s clear that he somehow breaks free and causes all sorts of chaos to ensue.

Creating a new Power Ranger is no small undertaking and requires approval from Saban Brands, who work closely with the creative team and BOOM! Studios editor Dafna Pleban to make it happen.

“There are many, many emails,” Higgins said of the process. “There has to be a narrative significance to them for us to even broach the subject of creating a new Ranger. Ryan and I don’t wanna create new things just because we can, we wanna create new things because of the story potential that they will generate.”

Shattered Grid starts in Power Rangers #25, out on March 21 and written by Higgins with art by Daniele Di Nicuolo, and will come shipped in a black polybag to avoid the juicy spoilers contained within from leaking ahead of time. The event will continue in issues of Go Go Power Rangers, by Parrott and artist Dan Mora, as well as two special one-shots.

When planning Shattered Grid, Higgins and Parrott kept in mind Geoff Johns’ Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps War and Blackest Night, two of their favorite events that had them talking excitedly about what happened in each issue. They are aiming to channel that same excitement by creating meaningful plot twists with narrative importance throughout the story.

As if creating a new Power Ranger wasn’t enough, there will also be a new villain from Lord Drakkon’s timeline called Finster Five.

“I pitched out the idea that Drakkon’s right-hand man would be a Finster who had clearly been through some life events, because he’s augmented with parts from Alpha Five. So he’s called Finster Five, and he’s basically a cyborg version of Finster. And the backstory there, of how that melding happened, was a lot of fun to build out. It gives Daniele something really interesting and unique to design,” Higgins said.

Art by Daniele Di Nicuolo. (BOOM! Studios/Saban Brands)

Power Rangers EP Brian Casentini offered comment on the significance of this monumental event.

"Saban’s Power Rangers has an incredible 25-year history that we use as a foundation when creating new content like our comic series with BOOM! Studios, but we always strive to build upon that core mythology and bring fans something new they’ve never seen before. For this Shattered Grid event, we are celebrating the brand’s 25th anniversary with an epic story line and many compelling new characters. To do this, Saban Brands worked in lock step with BOOM! Studios and our talented writers and artists to bring to life a modern, sinister Ranger character whom our fans definitely won’t want to miss,” Casentini said.

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You absolutely should, if and when you get the chance. What the guys over at Boom have done with the mythos has been fantastic. The Go Go Power Rangers series is also really great with getting to see how being a ranger actually effects their day to day teenage lives.